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Backstage

I photographed the backstage activity for the Wharton Charity Fashio Show this year. It is quite a spectacle backstage! The models need to change within a matter of a few seconds between their rounds on the ramp. The designers and artists scramble amongst the models. There’s a lot of movement and madness behind! Lot of nervous laughter, anxious waiting when waiting to get on the ramp, and high fiving to cheer eachother up.

As someone who loves to take candid shots, I really enjoyed the experience! It is challenging as the lighting is terrible, and it’s close to impossible to get the shot you want as there’s always a ton of obstacles in front or behind. It’s critical to have a fast lens. It’s again critical to be quick on your feet, and have enough space on your card to take as many images as you can and then sort them later. I also realized I need to soon invest in a good mounted flash to help in these low light conditions.

The Wharton School recently organized a Fashion Show for charity. MBA students walked the ramp, adorned with designer labels, some designed by Wharton Students themselves! 🙂 One of the designers asked me to photograph his line (http://www.masons.it). It sounded like fun and so I agreed.

This was the first time I was doing something like this and I never realized it would be so hard! The backstage is always in a flurry, with people running around, trying to get things done, trying to find what they need. Plus, this was all student organized so you can imagine the mess! The issue becomes how to photograph what you want especially when everyone is moving around, and you can’t really ask people to pose for you. There isn’t much place to move, you keep bumping into people, and so composing your shot and focusing on the right subjects is also tough.

Photographing the ramp was much worse since the models move so fast!! It was incredibly hard to get a non-blurry shot 😀 I had 4 lenses with me. The kit lens I did not use. The prime lens (85 mm, f/1.8)was of course not ideal for the ramp. Then I had a 55-250 zoom lens which again did not work. A fellow photographer lent me 70-200mm for a while but it was so gigantic and heavy! While perfect for the ramp, I just could not take stable shots with this lens (need to build some muscle :D). So I stuck with 50mm, f/1.8 macro lens.

But overall the experience was great. It was a lot of fun and I learnt a lot. Sharing backstage photos first, will be posting the (few) ramp shots I could take next.